Contrary to the claim made by some Congress leaders, the finance minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman was not referring to Rahul Gandhi’s “zero-sum Budget” dig when she used the term “a typical UP-type answer”. It was her minister of state (MoS) Pankaj Chaudhury’s response to the dig which the FM had characterised as “a typical UP-type answer”.

Whereupon, the FM described her MoS response as “a typical UP-type answer and good enough for an MP who ran away from UP “. The reference to the “MP who ran away from UP” is to Rahul Gandhi who contested the 2019 Lok Sabha polls not just from Amethi but from Wayanad in Kerala. However, contesting from more than one constituency does not mean one is running away from one state or the other. For the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Narendra Modi contested simultaneously from Varanasi in UP and from Vadodara in Gujarat, winning both constituencies by huge margins.

Returning to the FM’s post-Budget interaction with the media, the “typical UP-type answer” is Nirmala Sitaraman’s reference to the blunt, unequivocal response to Rahul Gandhi’s dig by her MoS Pankaj Chaudhury, who is the sitting and six-time MP from the UP constituency of Maharajganj, which is in the Terai region bordering Nepal and part of the Gorakhpur division.

However, shortly thereafter and in a subsequent media interaction, the Congress national spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala chose to link the FM’s quip of a “typical UP-style answer” not with the MoS Pankaj Chaudhury’s response but with the people’s comprehension or understanding of the Budget. This cue that the people of UP had been insulted was picked up by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra who tweeted “You did not put anything in the Budget for Uttar Pradesh. But what was the need to insult the people of UP like this? Understand, the people of UP are proud to be UP-type. We are proud of the language, dialect, culture and history of UP.” And the UP Congress tweeted, “We the people of UP are proud to be UP-type” with the hashtag “UPMeraAbhimaan”.

There are two points Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra makes in her tweet. The first is that “You did not put anything in the Budget for Uttar Pradesh.” However, putting anything in the Budget for UP, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur would have been in gross violation of the Election Commission’s Model Code of Conduct which has come into force from January 8 when the schedule for elections was announced.

The Election Commission has been categorically quoted as stating that “The Model Code of Conduct also applies to the Union Government insofar as announcements or policy decisions pertaining to and for Goa, Manipur, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh are concerned.”

As for the second point made by PriyankaGandhi-Vadra that “What was the need to insult the people of UP like this?,” the question has to be asked whether the people were insulted at all. During the post-Budget interaction, a leading question was asked by a journalist whether Rahul Gandhi had understood the Budget, and the MoS Pankaj Chaudhury responded that the Congress leader had probably not understood the Budget. Whereupon, the FM described the response by the MoS as “a typical UP-type answer and good enough for an MP who ran away from UP.” She had also asked Rahul Gandhi, “as a leader of the oldest party, (to) please understand what has been said about the Budget. I pity people who come up with quick responses. Just because you want to put something on Twitter, it doesn’t help. I only pity a party which has a leader who just comments without thinking.”

On the face of it, it does appear as if the only entity being insulted was the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. It was after the leading question was asked whether Rahul Gandhi had understood the Budget and the MoS replied that he had probably not understood the Budget, that the FM described her junior ministerial colleague’s response as “a typical UP-type answer”.

It may now suit the Congress to unlink Nimala Sitharaman’s response to the comment by the MoS and to maintain that the FM was making fun of the UP-types’ understanding of budgetary and economic matters. It is a moot point whether playing the parochial card by accusing others of looking down on UP will help India’s Grand Old Party..

Public memory may be short but not that short as to forget that it was less than a year ago that Rahul Gandhi compared voters in north India unfavourably with their counterparts in the south. On February 23, 2021, at an election-rally in Trivandrum, national TV news-channels like Times Now showed the MP from Wayanad as saying, “I was a member of Parliament for the first 16 years. I had got used to a different type of politics. Therefore, when I came to (the) South, I found it refreshing. I came to find that people in Kerala and (the) South care about issues and not only on a superficial level but at a deeper level.”

Since Rahul Gandhi represented Amethi in the Lok Sabha for the first 16 years, how should the people of this constituency and the rest of UP interpret this comment from their erstwhile MP?

And why should the FM’s “UP-type answer” not be a compliment to the plain, blunt straightforwardness manifested in the comment by the MoS that Rahul Gandhi had probably not understood the Budget? The MoS Pankaj Chaudhury is someone who has emerged from the grassroots, having served as a municipal councillor in Gorakhpur and then as deputy mayor before fighting and winning his first Lok Sabha election from the UP constituency of Maharajgang in 1991.